This Italian Saint’s life for twenty-five years was not one to be imitated, because he was a rough-and-ready soldier with a terrible love of gambling and temper that got him into trouble all the time.
At last he had gambled away every penny he had, plus his gun, and even the shirt he was wearing. To earn some money, he took a job with builders putting up a new monastery for the Capuchin monks. The Superior there urged Camillus to change his ways, and his words had a good effect. Camillus kept thinking about them until he finally fell to his knees and begged God for mercy. Then he entered the Capuchin monastery, but a bad sore on his leg made it impossible for him to stay.
St. Camillus went to a hospital in Rome, and though his leg pained him all his life, it healed enough to let him work there tending the sick. In each person, Camillus felt he was serving Jesus Himself, and people were amazed to see how gentle and tender this tall, husky man was with his poor patients. In those days, hospitals did not have regular nurses, and very often rough, careless servants made the patients suffer greatly. So St. Camillus founded a congregation of devoted servants of the sick.
Even when he was very sick, the Saint dragged himself out of his bed to ask the patients if they wanted anything. Once, one sick man begged him to make his bed a little more comfortable. “You beg me!” exclaimed Camillus. “Don’t you know yet that you have to give me orders, for I am your servant?”
Let us visit the poor and the sick to help them. One day Jesus will tell us, “I was hungry and you fed Me; I was sick and you visited Me”.
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